by Coleridge · Cluster: Self-Knowledge · Immortality · Self-Reliance
Abstract
An earlier draft and textual variants of ‘The Snow-Drop’, with editorial framing and Mrs. Robinson’s original, on the frail flower immortalized by enchantress-song.
Connections
Topoi: Immortality Through Verse Motifs: Flowers, Winter Themes & Concepts: Immortality of Art Fame, Transience Forms & Genres: Lyric, Fragment
Testo integrale / Full text
To the Editor of the Morning Post.
Sir,
I am one of your many readers who have been highly gratified
by some extracts from Mrs. Robinson’s ‘Walsingham’: you will
oblige me by inserting the following lines [sic] immediately
on the perusal of her beautiful poem ‘The Snow Drop’. — ZAGRI.
The ‘Lines’ were never sent or never appeared in the Morning Post.
To the Snow Drop.
1
Fear thou no more the wintry storm,
Sweet Flowret, blest by LAURA’S song:
She gaz’d upon thy slender form,
The mild Enchantress gaz’d so long;
That trembling as she saw thee droop,
Poor Trembler! o’er thy snowy bed,
With imitation’s sympathy
She too inclin’d her head.
2
She droop’d her head, she stretch’d her arm,
She whisper’d low her witching rhymes:
A gentle Sylphid heard the charm,
And bore thee to Pierian climes!
Fear thou no more the sparkling Frost,
The Tempest’s Howl, the Fog-damp’s gloom:
For thus mid laurels evergreen
Immortal thou shalt bloom!
3 [Stanza 2]
With eager [feelings] unreprov’d
With [steady eye and brooding thought]
Her eye with tearful meanings fraught,
[My Fancy saw her gaze at thee]
She gaz’d till all the body mov’d
[Till all the moving body caught,]
Interpreting, the Spirit’s sympathy —
The Spirit’s eager sympathy
Now trembled with thy trembling stem,
And while thou drooped’st o’er thy bed,
With sweet unconscious sympathy
Inclin’d { her [portraiture]
{ the drooping head.
First draft of Stanzas 1-3. MS. S. T. C.
Snow-drop’ runs thus:
All weak and wan, with head inclin’d,
Its parent-breast the drifted snow,
It trembles, while the ruthless wind
Bends its slim form; the tempest lowers,
Its em’rald eye drops crystal show’rs
On its cold bed below.
The Poetical Works of the late Mrs. Mary Robinson, 1806, i. 123.
Along that marge does Laura lie
Full oft where Slumber heaves her breast
MS. erased.